It is four years since Cork writer Danny Denton published his debut, The Earlie King and the Kid in Yellow. A gritty gangster tale set in a post-apocalyptic Ireland and written in a mishmash of experimental styles, it was gloriously off-the-wall: think Kevin Barry meets James Joyce meets Blade Runner.
All Along the Echo, Denton’s second book, is set in a more familiar Ireland, some time in the near future. It follows chatshow DJ Tony Cooney and his young producer Lou as they embark on a road trip across the country. The plan is to award a brand-new car – and a year’s supply of petrol – to one lucky listener. The only catch is that the winner must be among the many Irish who have recently returned from London, fleeing the capital’s spate of terrorist attacks.
As the book alternates between “ON AIR” and “OFF AIR” sections, we observe Tony and Lou in both personal and professional modes. At work, Tony is the confident, charismatic DJ entertaining the nation; at home, he is a dejected father of two, plagued by a midlife crisis and pining for his first love. Meanwhile Lou – the calm, reliable sidekick – is secretly crippled with anxiety about her relationship and the impending possibility of motherhood.
Alongside these two we encounter Ann, an elderly cancer patient, and Jada, a homeless teenager; we also hear from the endless array of individuals who phone in to voice their opinions on Tony’s radio show. Here they cover everything from racially motivated violence and the legalisation of sex work to the history of the English language – all intercut with ads and jingles and texts from other listeners throwing their ideas into the mix.
Like The Earlie King, the novel experiments with layout and style – some sections are formatted as radio scripts, others are broken up with nonsense words and static interference. Denton draws parallels between this plethora of voices and the profusion of graffiti that adorns Cork city, examples of which are replicated on the page. Tony doesn’t see the connection, dismissing the graffiti as “just names, slogans, rants, stupid things like that” – precisely the content his show generates. For someone who has made a career out of listening to others, he can be surprisingly narrow-minded.
Although the world of All Along the Echo may appear more familiar than its post-apocalyptic predecessor, there is also a recurring section in which two disembodied voices from the future exchange existential banter while “listening in, trying to piece it all together”. We are in the territory of Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, as the pair go back through the archives and select choice instalments to replay: “go on. give’s some more of TONY and LOU and all those other poor souls. i’m in the mood for it today! [static]”.
The disembodied voices also warn us: “It all gets so confusing, this business of living and imagining and dreaming in the one skull.” All Along the Echo does run the risk of confusion, with its abundance of different ideas and threads. However, it is a credit to Denton that he holds the book together. Inevitably some sections work better than others, and there is a certain amount of repetition, but the energy and invention are undeniable. Best of all, amid the imaginative pyrotechnics, there are moments of real tenderness and emotional resonance. The shocking violence of a shooting in a London theatre will stay with me for a long time, while Jada’s profound loneliness is delicately drawn. Denton also writes beautifully about parenthood.
“People are like cyclones made of words,” one character tells us. All Along the Echo is a cyclone of a novel, emulating the barrage of noise we navigate every day in our “information age”. It foregrounds the fundamental human desire to be seen and heard, as well as the tension between our constructed “ON AIR” identities we perform to the world and our private “OFF AIR” selves.
• All Along the Echo is published by Atlantic (£14.99). To support the Guardian and the Observer order a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
